


my boy grows beanstalks

by ebenroot



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M, YOI Fantasy Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 09:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17302382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebenroot/pseuds/ebenroot
Summary: As the town’s official (and only) beanstalk horticulturist, Yuuri Katsuki is not the least bit startled by finding things belonging to giants.--a jack and the beanstalk au (sort of)





	my boy grows beanstalks

As the town’s official (and only) beanstalk horticulturist, Yuuri Katsuki is not the least bit startled by finding things belonging to giants.

No, the thing that startles him - _has been_ for the last month - is finding things from giants with a piece of paper ripped from a journal stuck on the item’s surface - a declaration of love for Yuuri elegantly and adoringly prosed - signed by a ‘secret admirer’.

The days that the thief leaves Yuuri stolen giant’s treasure is sparse, as if whoever it is wants to leave Yuuri more than enough time to enjoy - or rather, panic -  about the gift before they present Yuuri with another. It’s midway through the month of April, Spring’s heady scent of buttercups permeating the air, two weeks after Yuuri found a golden lyre bigger than his person wedged in the rows of his tulips.

So, Yuuri supposes, it’s just about time for him to find now a golden tooth half-buried in his garden among his carrots and cabbage rows. It’s been polished lovingly so, well enough that Yuuri can see his early morning disoriented expression: glasses crooked on his nose, hair sticking out in all directions like a poorly built bird’s nest, corners of his slack mouth containing remnants of dried spittle from a good night’s sleep.

There’s a piece of paper - slightly torn at the bottom - crudely stuck along the neck of the tooth. And with a grimace, Yuuri sees that the person didn’t give the tooth a thorough cleaning underneath to remove _all_ the blood and gum flesh from the crevices of the tooth’s root.

For a moment, Yuuri only _stares._ Then for another, he feels his like his heart stops in his chest because _surely,_ a giant will notice their tooth missing. The only reason Yuuri is even standing there in his garden in his nightgown and not, per say, digesting in the bowels of a giant’s stomach, is because he always managed to struggle back up his beanstalk with the stolen possession before it has gone unnoticed.

How do you return a _tooth???_

He stares and and stares and formulates his plan as best as he can whilst his mind operates on an empty stomach, still rather lethargic with sleep. Eventually, he rubs at the corners of his eyes with his fist, then rubs at the spittle at the ends of his turned down mouth. His sigh is long, and as he cranes his neck up towards the sky, Yuuri can already feel an ache between his shoulders from having to climb back up the beanstalk with _this thing_ on his back.

He takes the note, and quietly folds it into a small square without reading its message. Then, he turns on his heel and trudges back inside his cottage to change for yet another climb.

 

* * *

 

There are six beanstalks that are sprouted and strewn across the small countryside village: two at the edge of the forest, one on the dirt pathway to the mountain, one in Yuuri’s garden and two in the fields of Phichit Chulanont’s farm. All were grown by Yuuri and all are meticulously taken care of by Yuuri. And for the most part, everyone leaves his beanstalks alone.

Everyone except this secret admirer.

“You haven’t seen anyone suspicious lingering around here?” Yuuri asks Phichit one Tuesday afternoon, squinting at the cluster of golden eggs resting at the base of the beanstalk. They’re about the size of an oversized gourd, big and round, exactly four of them. Carrying one doesn’t seem like such a daunting task, but Yuuri is more curious about how the secret admirer made off with _four_ under the guise of nightfall.

Phichit shakes his head, hands stuffed into the pockets of his trousers.

“They’re pretty crafty,” he admits to Yuuri with a lopsided smile, then withdraws one of his hands from his pockets, a note held in his grasp. “And their cologne smells pretty nice too.”

“Oh _god_ ,” Yuuri groans, taking the note to hurriedly fold back up and stuff in the back pocket of his own trousers.

Phichit’s smile gets bigger, his eyes sparkling with more amusement. “I think it’s kind of sweet, giving you gifts and writing you poems and stuff,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. Glancing down to the eggs still resting against the base of the beanstalk, he admits with a fond pout, “Seung-Gil wouldn’t climb a beanstalk and steal golden eggs for me.”

“Seung-Gil wouldn’t steal anything. He’s the constable. He _jails_ people that steal.”

Phichit turns his nose up at that. “But _still._ It’s the thought that counts.”

Yuuri gives an incredulous shake of his head, then approaches the beanstalk to rest his bare palm against it. Giving the plant one, two, three tender strokes of its stems and the large leaves that Yuuri can reach if he stands on his toes, he surmises with a small hum, “At least they haven’t damaged it.”

“You and your beanstalks,” Phichit drolls.

Ignoring the comment, Yuuri crouches down to take an egg into his grasp. The surface is hot from the sun beating down on it, and the egg is actually heavier than it looks. He momentarily stumbles with it, his body attempting to situate itself upright with the extra weight.

“I’ll have to make two trips probably. Or carry two bags with two eggs each,” Yuuri mutters under his breath, adjusting his grip.

“Oh now, why don’t you keep at least one?” Phichit asks, gesturing to the other eggs still on the dirt ground of his wheat field. Yuuri turns to the other man, blinks at him, lets the beat of silence occur between them before he makes a noise of astonishment.

“Are you _crazy?_  If a giant finds out humans have been stealing from them - using _my_ beanstalks to steal from them _and_ bringing their stuff to _me_ \- it, it will horrible! They’ll - they’ll kill me and eat me and - and regurgitate me so they could eat me again and - it’ll just be... _bad_.”

Phichit doesn’t make the claim that Yuuri is exaggerating, that Yuuri is jumping to conclusions. There’s a reason people don’t bother with any of Yuuri’s beanstalks, and it has to do with what’s at the tiptiptop of the plant that hides behind the clouds.

“Let me help you at least,” Phichit then says as Yuuri struggles to get another egg in his hold.  

Yuuri shakes his head in protest, huffing a grunt as he straightens his posture. “I’ll be fine,” he reassures, testing the weight of both eggs before settling them both back on the ground. Yep, definitely two trips up the beanstalk.

He turns back to Phichit, wiping the sweat from his hands on his thighs. “Just...if you see anyone suspicious lingering around, let me know,” Yuuri requests, further pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“You can make a notice in the town square,” Phichit suggests, framing his hands around spaces of air as he pictures the headline, “‘To the person proclaiming their love for me in stolen treasure from giants, please just send me chocolate instead. Love, Yuuri Katsuki.’”

Yuuri brings his hands to his face, suddenly flushed with heat. “Nooooo,” he whines through his fingers.

Phichit shrugs, taking one last glance at the golden eggs. “Well,” he says with a tilt of his head, “I still think it’s kinda romantic.”

 

* * *

 

 _It’s not romantic to be given stolen goods,_ Yuuri thinks as he puts up another notice in the town square, one on each storefront facade in their dusty little windows. It’s not like Yuuri is even interested in dating or seeing anyone anyways. He’s far too busy, what with cultivating and maintaining his beanstalks, studying the magic that flows through their stems and comes out through their leaves as droplets of fresh morning dew. He hasn’t the time to be romanced. He hasn’t the time _to_ romance.

So, Yuuri doesn’t bother to get enraptured in the scent of cologne his secret admirer always spritzes their love notes with. He doesn’t sneak a peek at the writing, doesn’t let his eyes linger on the cursive writing of ‘ _My Beautiful Yuuri,_ ’ for too long, before he neatly folds it into a square and slip in his desk drawer. He doesn’t let his face get warm thinking about it. Not at all. Not in the slightest. Nope.

He also doesn’t bother to realize that he’s planted himself in the middle of the road, blank stare on his face and few sheets of paper with his scrawl of ‘ _pleasepleaseplease do not climb the beanstalks!!_ ’ clutched in his fist. Neither does he realize that there’s a  person that approaches him from behind to rest a hand on his shoulder.

Yuuri turns abruptly when he smells the sweet scent of flowers, papers going behind his back.

“Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to be in the way,” he quickly apologizes, eyes immediately averting to the ground. There is only one person in their entire village that always smells of flowers, only one person that Yuuri just can’t ever seem to look directly in the eye.

“It’s alright,” Victor Nikiforov says. He sounds like he’s smiling.

Yuuri doesn’t know much about Victor, aside from the facts that he is a) the owner of the only floral shop west of the town center, nestled between the baker and the candlestick maker, and b) so dreadfully handsome that Yuuri can’t look at him, let alone use the tongue in his mouth for conversation with the other man. Whenever they speak, their words are brief. A simple ‘hello’ and ‘thank you, goodbye’ is all Yuuri can ever muster when he drops by the shop for tools for his garden and beanstalks, then scuttles off before any other words can dream of appearing underneath his tongue.

“Are you in town for some tools? Rather soon for those clippers to be giving out already,” Victor inquires, stepping closer, smelling even sweeter of tulips and daffodils. To this, Yuuri steps back, maintaining the small distance between them.

“N-No, I was just - um - I just needed to put up a notice about the beanstalks,” Yuuri explains.

“Is there something wrong with them?”

“No, they’re fine,” Yuuri admits, cheeks beginning to warm. “Actually, the fertilizer that you made really helped their roots grow less tangled and not rise out from the dirt like they used to.”

It isn’t an invitation to draw in closer, but Victor still pulls towards Yuuri like a magnet.

“I’ve created another concoction,” says Victor, the tone of his voice soft with gentle want. “Something to help the leaves maintain their green? I can demonstrate it for you over some tea?”

Tea with Victor. It sounds pleasant and frightening at the same time.

Yuuri is already shaking his head in rejection before the ‘no no no, I can’t’ stammers past his lips. His shoulders hunch up to his ears and he takes the notes to smother against his chest, starting past Victor without daring to raise his head. If Victor said anything to him - which most likely, he did - Yuuri doesn’t hear it over the sound of his erratically beating heart.

It isn’t until Yuuri is far down a dusty and winding road that trails out of the town, meandering his way towards the deep thicket of forest groves where one of his beanstalks grows past the tall trees, that he stops for a moment and sighs. Taking the remaining few notes into his grasp, he crumbles them up in a balled heap.

He’s far too busy for dating, for secret admirers, and for Victor. There’s no point to even entertain such thoughts. No point at all.

 

* * *

 

The two weeks that follow after the notice is placed in the square are quiet. Spring brings its showers and Yuuri spends his afternoons camped out by the beanstalks with a tarp thrown over his head, furiously scribbling down notes as the beantstalk’s leaves and vines curl and writhe to soak up water.

Phichit has a bowl of warm soup for Yuuri when he eventually makes his way from the beanstalk in the fields to Phichit’s house. It’s warm and dry in the home, a scent of sunflowers intertwining with a ladened smell of spices permeating across the kitchen and the dining room.

“You’re gonna get sick,” Phichit chides after he makes Yuuri eat at least three spoonfuls, just enough so the warmth of the broth can course through Yuuri’s chilled veins. “That, or struck by lightning. Whichever comes first.”

“I won’t,” Yuuri mumbles through noodles and chunks of chicken. He swallows, then dabs at any remnants on his mouth with the back of his hand. “Just a little bit longer. Just a few more minutes.”

“I’ll call Seung-Gil. I swear I’ll call him and tell him to arrest you and put you in a nice, warm, _dry_ cell.”

“What would be my offense?”

Phichit braces his hands against the surface of his dining table. It’s a little rickety, only steady when there’s a couple of books from Seung-Gil’s library wedged underneath the right leg, and makes a shrill creaking noise when a heavy weight is placed onto it like Phichit does now.

“Dying of pneumonia,” Phichit says matter-of-factly. Then, turning his nose up ever so slyly, he adds as an afterthought: “I bet your secret lover wouldn’t like you catching cold either.”

Yuuri promptly starts choking.

“I don’t - I - _no_ ,” he manages when he’s not wheezing on soggy noodles anymore. “I don’t have a secret _lover_. The whole thing is gone now. I haven’t received anything in two weeks and I’m sure they have finally gotten the hint to leave the beanstalks alone.”

Phichit pouts. “That’s a shame. I thought that was sweet of them.”

“It’s wasn’t,” Yuuri mutters, cheeks feeling warm, but he’s sure it isn’t because of the soup.

“I wonder who they were though,” Phichit muses. He turns his eyes to the fixtures of his ceiling, the moulding high and finely designed, thinking on something Yuuri _really_ doesn’t want to think on. “The cologne smelt kinda familiar. Like, I’ve smelled that scent before in town somewhere, you know?”

Yuuri doesn’t know. Or at least, he doesn’t want to let his mind contemplate on _if_ he does know.

The rain continues to fall outside, a hard _pitter-patter-pitter-patter_ against the kitchen window that looks out onto the small porch where two rocking chairs and a chess table sit sheltered from the storm. Phichit moves into the kitchen, his footsteps lighter than air. He goes to the cupboard and gets out two more bowls and starts spooning some soup inside. Yuuri sits in his chair and watches, twiddling his thumbs until the silence urges his tongue to move.

“It would only get in the way,” Yuuri murmurs. “There’s so much that we haven’t discovered about giants and beanstalks and _magic_ as a whole! And - and no one in this town is even the _least bit_ curious about that there are these plants that may have untapped resources that we could be making use of and dedicate their time to studying them!”

“I love it when you talk all nerdy. It’s so cute,” Phichit coos.

The click of Yuuri’s tongue is indignant. “But _anyways_ , it’ll be a fruitless venture. I just don’t have the time,” Yuuri retorts. He rubs the palms of his hands around the curve of his knees, still damp with rainwater and a thin layer of mud caked against the joint, and mutters under his breath, “I’m always covered in and smelling like dirt anyways. In what way is _that_ attractive?”

Phichit winks. “Maybe they like you a little _dirty_. Besides, didn’t you once told me that when Victor smells like fertilizer, it’s like your heart ties itself into a knot?”

The scraping sound of Yuuri’s chair hurriedly sliding across the floorboards is loud, and the sudden burn that stings Yuuri’s  cheeks is _hot_.

“I think I should check the soil,” he murmurs when he’s already walking briskly out the kitchen and towards the back door. When he throws it open, the rain stings his cheeks like sudden drops of ice, and he flinches back into warmth of Phichit’s home. In the distance, the beanstalk disappears into the dark thunderclouds, its large leaves rustling as the winds blow.

The door is swiftly closed shut once more, and Yuuri wipes the flecks of water from the lens of his glasses. Behind him, Phichit gives a coy little smile.

“...I’ll just finish up my notes in here first,” Yuuri mumbles, and meanders back to the kitchen, plops himself back down in his seat. When Phichit slides him another bowl of soup with a wink, Yuuri picks back up his spoon and digs right in.

 

* * *

 

There are four more days of rain that pass, and for each day, Yuuri checks on the beanstalks scattered through the countryside, coming home in the early hours of dawn with an ache in his bones and mud to his knees. The leaves of the beanstalk are starting to grow larger than the walls of his home, thick enough to provide adequate shelter as Yuuri sits underneath and culls away the weeds beginning to sprout. He always cranes his neck up to see how the beanstalks grow into the thunderclouds and wonder what it must be like up above. What are thunderstorms to giants and what is the weather like farfarfar above the ground where Yuuri calls ‘home’.

On the fifth day when the clouds are no longer darkened and fat raindrops cease to fall, Yuuri awakes to the sound of someone yelling in his backyard. Loudly yelling.

He falls out of his bed, startled, and blindly paws for his glasses on his nightstand with one hand, while reaching underneath his bed for a wooden walking stick with the other. The yelling does not stop as Yuuri hurries down the steps and out the backdoor to his garden, immediately heading for the beanstalk. And though his eyes are still heavy and blurred with exhaustion, he does not mistake the shiny glimmer of gold that enters his vision.

A harp. An actual singing harp. Or rather, an actual _yelling_ harp.

“Take me back!” the harp spits when Yuuri approaches it with caution. “Tell that jerk he better come back and take me back to Beka right now!”

There’s a note attached to one of the harp’s thin strings, a loving ‘ _my dearest Yuuri_ ’ written in beautiful cursive against violet stationary. Yuuri reaches out to grab it, then immediately gets his hand swat at by the harp. “Don’t touch me! You dirty humans have no business taking me from Beka! I ought to give you a black eye like that creep that stole me, you stupid-”

“Okay, okay! I’ll take you back to your owner! Just - just let me get changed-” The moment Yuuri takes a step backwards, the ground rumbles beneath his feet and causes him to stagger. He pauses, arms stretched out to balance himself as the ground continues to shake and rattle his body where he stands. Yuuri’s eyes dart around, finding nothing out of place in his garden, and then he looks up towards where the beanstalk stretches to the sky.

And there, he sees the soles of giant boots stepping through the clouds, bracing themselves against the side of the beanstalk in their descent.

Yuuri’s never seen a giant before, not with his own eyes and not even when he had to return all the previously stolen treasures. He’s seen the homes of giants - big and made of polished stone and straw, with furniture bigger than Yuuri’s home if it were stacked upon itself three times over. But to see the being that lives in those ginormous homes now slowly making their way down the beanstalk, big feet first and then legs and a torso with big hands grabbing at the beanstalk’s leaves to crush in their hold, all Yuuri can do is feel his blood go cold.

Then, naturally, he panics. ‘No’ is what slips past his trembling lips first, and he repeats the word over and over as he starts running around like a chicken with its head chopped off, the ground rumbling under his feet as the giant continues their way down the beanstalk that sways underneath their weight. Yuuri doesn’t have anything to fight a giant. He doesn’t even know how one _would_ fight a giant. He’s going to die. He’s going to die without ever finding out the magic of the beanstalks or telling Victor he’d love to sit with him for tea and _no no_ **_no_** _._

The harp has ceased its yelling at Yuuri to instead yell for the giant that is now halfway down the beanstalk, their large form now casting a giant shadow over Yuuri’s home. _I’m running out of time_ , Yuuri thinks, gnawing hard on his lip. There’s no way he can fight a giant, maybe he can reason with it? _Can_ a giant be reasoned with? No, no he should run away! But how can he outrun someone that would catch up to him in only one step (and maybe decided to squish him in the process)? Plus, where would he even run too? Yuuri’s home is situated far from the town and from Phichit’s farm, but he can’t imagine what would happen if he managed to wrap someone else in this awful predicament.

Yuuri lets out a cry of anguish. What can he do?!

When Yuuri glances up to gauge how much longer it is till the giant puts an end to him, he can see the giant’s face: a man; calm, cool, and not entirely horrific like he thought a giant would look. He’s peering down at Yuuri, squinting with his brown eyes and frowning as he scans the area, before his eyes rest on the golden harp fanning him down. With one hand, he reaches out towards Yuuri standing absolutely still with terror.

“Don’t be afraid,” he says, and his deep voice echoes enough to make the window panes of Yuuri’s home rattle.

The giant then continues down the beanstalk, carefully placing his boots in the footholds of tangled vines and careful to not pull out any of the large green leaves. Yuuri steps back as far as he can, till his back is pressed up against the door leading inside his house, wondering if it's too late to run inside and hide under his bed. When the giant is a quarter of the way towards the ground, he gauges the area again and looks out to the larger plain of open grass that lies outside of Yuuri’s garden past the white fence bordering Yuuri’s home. The giant gets a good grip of a leaf stem, and then with sudden force, pushes himself off the beanstalk to leap down.

When he lands, the ground bounces Yuuri off his feet and he falls flat on his behind. His house goes slanted, the windows on the first floor break, and some of his vegetables unearth themselves from the soil. The harp topples from the impact, but rights itself before it can fall on the ground, raising its hands towards the giant that casts a shadow over the entirety of Yuuri’s home.

Yuuri has no idea what to do, if he should run or if he should grab a shovel or a rake or _some_ sort of weapon that, yes, might and will be absolutely useless in protecting him from being crushed by a giant fist or a giant boot, but would make him feel better that he actually _tried_ to fight back. For now, he sits absolutely still as the giant reaches down and plucks the harp out of Yuuri’s garden, regarding Yuuri with an expression that is neither menacing nor cheerful. In fact, the giant just looks exhausted.

“Which one are you? The human that’s been stealing from me, or the human that’s been putting all my stuff back in the wrong place?” the giant asks, and his voice makes the ground quake. Yuuri’s first answer is just a slather of unintelligible noises that culminate in him just shaking his head ‘no’ over and over. The giant stares down at him, maybe wondering whether or not to put Yuuri out of his misery by squishing him already. Or maybe if Yuuri would be a worthwhile snack. Or maybe he’s thinking about killing Yuuri _before_ he eats him. That might be better; Yuuri thinks he’d rather be crushed under a boot instead of crushed between teeth.

When the giant sighs, Yuuri’s eyes force themselves closed, preparing for the worst.

“No more,” he states, pocketing his harp. “Or _else_.”

The threat is heard loud and clear. Yuuri offers another flurry of head nods.

The giant grabs at the beanstalk with his big hands, tucking the tip of his boot into a thicket of its vines as a foothold. “Nice beanstalk, by the way,” the giant compliments. Yuuri nods his head. It’s all he seems capable of doing at the moment.

With that, the giant starts his ascent back up into the clouds. Yuuri partially wants to run back into his home and record the beanstalk’s movements of having such a heavy weight like a _giant_ affect its structure, but his legs refuse to pull himself up and _move already_. He sits and he sits and he sits; the beanstalk sways, but it’s like there’s only a breeze whistling through its leaves and its vines instead of a giant slowly making his way back up through the clouds and out of Yuuri’s sight.

Yuuri isn’t sure how long he sat there, but it must have quite some time since the moment he _does_ rise to his feet - wobbly and skin still tingling with jittered nerves - out the corner of his eye, he sees Victor running towards his garden gate.

“Yuuri! Yuuri!” Victor shouts, frantically throwing himself over the gate instead of coming through the door. His arms go wide and wrap Yuuri in a tight embrace, and the gasp of shock gets coaxed from Yuuri’s lungs. “Are you okay?! The town is a total mess from feeling that earthquake and I just - I -”

Yuuri pulls himself from Victor’s grasp, only so his face wasn’t smothered against Victor’s neck. With surprise, Yuuri asks with widened eyes, “What happened to your eye?”

Victor’s hand goes up to cover the bruising of his left eye, a nervous smile coming over his lips. “O-Oh, I just - I fell, you know. On the run over here. I just - I thought that maybe something might have happened and...I just got concerned about you.”

“What did you think happened?” Yuuri asks. He moves Victor’s hand away, gently cupping Victor’s cheek to take a better look. Yuuri thinks about the harp and its sharp words, ‘ _I ought to give you a black eye like that creep who stole me!_ ’, but no. It can’t _possibly_ be…

Victor’s face is warm against Yuuri’s palm. “I just...had a bad feeling. I - I didn’t want you hurt or anything after that...earthquake,” he explains. Yuuri hums.

“I’m fine. Thank you for being concerned about me, though.”

Victor nods, but doesn’t pull himself away from Yuuri’s touch just yet. His eyes wander across the destruction of Yuuri’s property, to the broken windows and the slanted structure of Yuuri’s home, to the uprooted vegetables and then the beanstalk that stretches up into the clouds. There’s puzzlement to the way Victor pulls his eyebrows down and he frowns. Yuuri’s thumb lightly strokes against Victor’s cheekbone.

“He took the harp back,” Yuuri informs. Victor turns quickly, his good eye widening in surprise and his skin tinting pink.

“I - I don’t - I - what harp? I don’t know anything about a harp. I don’t even know who you’re talking about that took this harp that you’re speaking of,” Victor says, his good eye having trouble focusing on Yuuri’s face and erratically flickering to look everywhere else. It’s strange seeing Victor flustered like this, feeling how warm he gets under Yuuri’s touch and hearing that nervous squeak just hidden on the tip of Victor’s tongue. It’s strange, but Yuuri thinks he kinda likes it.

“Well, there was a harp. It was from a giant but it was stolen by someone that has been leaving me presents for the past few weeks,” Yuuri explains, keeping his eyes averted to the ground. “Thankfully, since I’ve been returning all the gifts, it didn’t seem like the giant was that angry.”

Victor tries to hide his surprise, but his eye is far too expressive for his own good.

“You’ve - you’ve been _returning_ them?”

“Of course I had to return them! I don’t have any need for gold!” With an awkward scratch of Yuuri’s head, he adds, “Besides, I don’t...really enjoy lavish things like that. The..the letters would have been more than enough.”

“O-Oh.”

There’s a moment of quiet between them, where Yuuri’s heart beats like a steady drum against his chest. He bites at his lower lip and his eyelashes flutter as he asks with a quiet voice, “If...if you aren’t too busy, I have some ice maybe for your eye? And...maybe some tea? Tea - um - tea is...nice for...the eyes...I think...”

Victor laughs. It sounds breathless. “If getting a black eye is all I had to do for us to have tea together, I should have gotten punched weeks ago,” he admits.

“I thought you fell.”

“Ah. Right. Fell.”

Yuuri clicks his tongue, but his hand goes down from Victor’s cheek to twine their fingers together regardless, laughter bubbling up in his chest. Tea with Victor.

Far better than any treasure.


End file.
